Aspekte der kolonialen und postkolonialen Toponymie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschen Kolonialismus

Abstract

Aspekte der kolonialen und postkolonialen Toponymie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschen Kolonialismus"Rien n'est en effet simple, et l'histoire va vite." (Denis Crouzet, La nuit de la 418) Abstract: This paper argues that linguists and historians alike may learn from studying colonial and postcolonial toponymy comprehensively. The authors provide an inventory of toponyms which were introduced during short-lived colonial reign of Imperial Germany in Africa and Oceania. The focus is on two classes of colonial toponyms, namely those which are entirely German and those which give evidence of hybrid formations. The systematicity of these toponymical classes on the phonological, morphological, and semantic level is described and evaluated. The presentation of the facts from the colonial past of Germany is preceded by a discussion of a variety of aspects which are of interest for the study of colonial and postcolonial toponymy in general. This study marks the beginning of a long-term project which aims at a comparative analysis of the toponymical practices associated with colonialism and postcoloniallism.

Vorland-Nyika and Kumbamulde. The handling of indigenous place names in Oskar Baumann’s Usambara writings

“…It can be assumed that nouns with a similar meaning, such as Colonie 'colony' or Weiler 'hamlet', follow the same construction preferences. Stolz and Warnke (2015) analyzed the index of the GDKA in order to identify prototypical features of German colonial toponymy. This index includes the former German colonies of Kamerun, Togo, Deutsch-Ostafrika, and the widely scattered possessions in the Pacific, whereas it does not include the charted toponyms of Deutsch-Südwestafrika (DSW).…”

“…To end this section, it should be noted that Baumann used two classifiers which, in the data analyzed in Stolz and Warnke (2015) and (2018c), are idiosyncratic for colonies other than DOA. In Baumann, we find the classifier Kuppe ('hilltop') in Kwambakuppe (Baumann 1890: 112), which otherwise is found only in Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Stolz and Warnke 2018c: 84).…”